Footfalls in the Snow
by Antharyn
Summary: My most realistic take on what happened right after Aizen and Gin save our little Academy babies from their disastrous field assignment and how Shuuhei and Izuru met for the first time.


Standing atop the Fourth Division barracks, alone and just a little too close to the edge, Hisagi Shuuhei brough a jug of sake to his lips and took a long, satisfying swig. The ochoko he held in his free hand went ignored as he gratefully drank straight from the bottle, letting the heat sear down his throat and add fuel to the alcohol-induced warmth already radiating through him despite the frigid air that bit into his skin and made his lungs hurt. He savoured the pain. He deserved it.

Unfamiliar voices floated up from the rooms below, travelling far in the otherwise dead silence. An accident, they said. A tragedy. He heard his name.

_Fuck them_, Shuuhei thought and gulped down another mouthful of sake.

"Kaito," he gasped as soon as he swallowed it down. He took another draught. And another.

"Nanami."

"Takeo."

As the morbid list continued, so did the flow of alcohol. The still too fresh memory of masked monstrosities, near-deafening screams, and blood prompted Shuuhei to knock back a mouthful for every name, every casualty—every person he was never going to see again.

"Yuzuki." Another drink.

"Tadashi."

"Aoga."

And lastly: "Kanisawa." He let this drink go slower, last longer—as long as he could hold it—until the burn in his throat wasn't the only one he could feel and he swallowed, gasping and wiping tears from his eyes.

"Damn it," he cursed, when the bandages over his right eye were sodden with his tears, the moisture making the wounds sting. "Damn it all to hell." He suppressed the urge to rip the bandages off, and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

A flash of white caught his eye and he went still, staring at the lone snowflake that had just landed on his hand and feeling the tiny pinprick of cold against his skin. He shivered. Numbness settled over him as more snowflakes drifted lazily to the ground.

Winter had never seemed so dark and cold to him before, not even when he was still in Rukongai where the chilly air meant death if you couldn't find shelter. Even back then, despite sub-zero temperatures and near-starvation, winter meant brightly burning fires and roasting whatever you were lucky enough to find that day. Since entering the Academy it was contraband liquor and snowball fights, music, stories and laughter. Winter was snuggling up to a warm body under thick blankets, watching the first fall of snow through frosted glass windows.

But what was winter now if not the terrible memory of losing his closest friends?

Shuuhei clutched the ochoko he held tightly in his hand, trying to crush it in his fist, before hurling it carelessly into the darkness. Without thinking he took two steps forward and stood at the roof's very edge, staring down at the snow-covered ground almost longingly. Bile rose up in his throat, caustic and hot. He closed his eyes.

"Senpai?"

A soft voice and the sound of hurried footsteps shattered the silence. Shuuhei's eyes snapped open.

"Who's there?" he called out, turning in the direction of the unfamiliar voice. In the shadows stood a young blond, looking lost and out of place with his wide blue eyes and disheveled hair. It didn't take long for Shuuhei to place him as one of the three freshmen who came back for him and saved his life earlier that night. "What are you doing out here?" He asked. "It's the middle of the night."

"I couldn't sleep," the blond answered quickly. "My friend Renji, the one with red hair...he was snoring and—" The kid was babbling nervously. Shuuhei remembered that all three freshmen had to stay the night to attest to the Hollow attack and recuperate in case of trauma. Perhaps the younger student's prattling was a result from the shock. Shuuhei's frown deepened and he cut the blond's stammering short.

"Just kick him out of bed or something. Look, I mean no disrespect but I'd really rather be alone right n—"

"Please come down from there, Hisagi-senpai."

The words were rushed, but there was no mistaking the austerity in them. A command. A plea. Shuuhei froze. "What?" He took a closer look at the blond and saw what he had somehow missed earlier. The younger student's posture was tense—his back stiff, his hands clenched into fists. His blue eyes were bright and very, very alert and Shuuhei noticed for the first time how close he was standing to the roof's edge.

_Too close_, he thought and something inside him tightened. _Way too close._ Suddenly the younger student's uneasy babbling made sense as Shuuhei's heart rate quickened and his whole body went rigid.

"I'm not going to jump," he said harshly, more to himself than to the younger student. Holding the blond's gaze, he took a slow step back from the roof's edge and then another, and another. He forced his heart rate to slow down by sheer will. "I'm not going to jump," he repeated softly this time and the blond visibly relaxed.

The younger student stared at him, speechless, for a moment before he blushed and looked away. "Forgive me. I didn't mean to think that you would. I just saw you from the window and I thought... I'm sorry," he gave Shuuhei a quick bow before excusing himself and turning to leave. He was just about to duck into an open window when Shuuhei called out to him.

"Wait!"

The blond stopped and turned.

"I never got your name," Shuuhei said.

The younger student blinked and then straightened. "It's Kira. Kira Izuru."

The blond held out his hand a little uncertainly and Shuuhei's mood lightened somewhat as he eyed it with curiosity and amusement. He clasped it firmly in his own. "Kira Izuru," Shuuhei repeated as they shook hands. "You want a drink?" He held up the sake bottle and jostled it, frowning when a feeble slosh echoed from within its depths. "I've got more in my room," he said before he could stop himself and, judging by the way Kira's eyebrows went up, he wasn't the only one surprised by the invitation.

"You said you wanted to be alone." The blond looked at him dubiously but there was a spark of curiosity in his eyes. Shuuhei thought back on his own words from earlier and couldn't deny that they were true. He _did_ want to be alone; a scant few hours was nowhere near enough to mourn the loss of his friends and come to terms with what had happened. The rest of eternity was nowhere near enough to do that.

But Kira was still staring at him expectantly, waiting for his response, and he wondered if he should rescind the invite and send the blond on his way, let himself brood a little longer. Then he remembered what it felt like to stand on the roof's edge without really knowing how he got there.

"I don't...I don't think that's a very good idea right now," he said finally and something in Kira's eyes changed. Sympathy? Pity? Shuuhei decided he didn't want to know. He jerked his head in the direction of his room. "Follow me," he said, leading the way to his room without looking at the blond. Neither of them spoke as they went. The sound of their footsteps muted by snow under their feet was all they could hear.

It was only when they climbed through the window and Shuuhei lit a small lamp on the bedside table that he noticed Kira had been walking barefoot in the snow this whole time. The blond was shivering from head to toe.

"Hell," Shuuhei muttered, grabbing a blanket from his bed and tossing it to the younger student. Then he reached for the jug of sake he had hidden under the bed and handed it to the blond. "Get warm," he said. "Can't have anyone else dying on me." He chuckled mirthlessly.

Kira said nothing as he draped the blanket over himself and took a tentative sip of sake, wincing when it burned down his throat. Shuuhei was impressed he didn't gag outright on the stuff. "It's good," he rasped, passing the bottle back to Shuuhei. "How did you get it?"

"A friend of mine works here. He heard about what happened and thought I could use a drink." He scoffed at the understatement and sat on his bed with a sigh. "You can have that one," he said, nodding at the one opposite his, and Kira gave a small smile before sitting down.

They passed the sake between them several times in silence and Shuuhei took the chance to actually look the younger student over, picking up details he had missed. Blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin; a noble if the handshake and soft manner of speech were anything to go by. Nothing out of the ordinary, Shuuhei concluded. Except for his _reiatsu_. Shuuhei could sense the energy flowing through the younger student's body, and it was potent and honed. Kira couldn't have been much younger than him, probably a decade younger at most, and he was just a freshman. _Reiatsu_ didn't feel like this until you were well past the second year in the Academy.

"So what's your story, Kira Izuru?" Shuuhei asked after a while.

"Just Kira, please," the blond said, blushing faintly before tilting his head slightly to one side. "And what do you mean by 'my story'?"

"Who you are, where you came from." Shuuhei took another drink of sake. "Why you decided to be a shinigami."

"Not much to tell." Kira shrugged. "I'm just...me. I decided to be a shinigami for my family. For my...my parents." He seemed to struggle with that last part, and Shuuhei filed that little detail away for future reference. In front of him, Kira drank a mouthful of sake and shook his head. "But I had no idea what I was getting into," he said. "I didn't think it would be like this."

The blond smiled at him, but it was a sad smile, and Shuuhei felt a pang inside him. A freshman—_just_ a freshman—and already Kira was missing the casual, carefree air of someone who had yet to see a Hollow. If he had it this morning he didn't have it now, and it was never coming back. For some reason the thought made Shuuhei feel guilty, but he ruthlessly crushed the idea. Shit, he'd been seeing Hollows since he was a child. He grew up, and Kira Izuru would have to, too.

Shuuhei took a long drought of sake just to keep himself from saying anything and then held it out to Kira. "Keep it," he told the blond. "I don't think I can drink anymore."

The younger student nodded and took another swig. His face was already flushed from the alcohol and, as insane as it was, the sight made Shuuhei just a little giddy. He had a young, most probably already tipsy freshman on a bed in his room and he wasn't doing anything about it. Kanisawa would have laughed. If she was still alive.

"Listen," Shuuhei said quietly. "Thanks for coming back for me back then. I would have been killed like all the others if it wasn't for you and your friends. I owe you one. I owe you my life." He said it lightly, but the depth of his gratitude actually surprised him. He really would have died if it weren't for those three. The corner of his mouth twitched with dark amusement. "That's twice you've saved me now."

Kira frowned. "You said you weren't going to jump."

Shuuhei looked away. A heavy silence settled over them and he felt more than heard Kira get up and draw near. A hand touched his shoulder, firm and reassuring, and he tried not to flinch away.

"I'm sorry we didn't get there sooner, Senpai. And I...I'm sorry about your friends. I know how you feel."

"The fuck you do," Shuuhei grit out, his tone harsher than he intended. He shrugged Kira's hand away and felt anger flare inside him at the unsolicited sympathy. "You didn't even know them." He glared at the blond who only stared solemnly back at him.

"My parents are dead, too," the younger student confessed. "I know how it feels to wish some people were still with us." Kira said it calmly and his blue eyes betrayed nothing, but Shuuhei felt a ripple of sadness in the air that instantly made him want to take back his harsh words.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I shouldn't have said that. It's just..." he trailed off and made to scrub his hands over his face, stopping when his fingers came in contact with the bandages. "I'm exhausted," he admitted, looking down at his hands. "But I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes I see it happen all over again."

Even now, the sounds and images trickled into his mind despite his efforts to push them away—the silent hiss over the comm link, Kanisawa screaming his name, and Aoga's last outraged cry. It all happened so fast but he could remember every frightening detail—the looks on his friends' faces, the smell of blood. If only he had sensed the hollow, if only he had been fast enough—strong enough—he could have saved them and he wouldn't have to face this alone.

"It's the hardest the day after," Kira said suddenly, bringing him back from his grim thoughts, and Shuuhei looked up to see that the blond was still standing over him. Slowly, as though afraid he would be told off any moment, Kira approached the brunet and took a seat next to him on the bed. Shuuhei didn't say anything but he watched the blond's every move warily. Kira met his gaze steadily. "When you wake up tomorrow you'll forget for a split second that they're gone. And when it comes back to you and you remember..." He trailed off and Shuuhei found himself staring very intently at Kira's face, at every line that deepened and made him look a little older than he was, at the silvery glint in his blue eyes that conveyed a level of understanding that Shuuhei didn't think was possible—not from a freshman, not from a boy he had only just met.

"The pain never really disappears, Senpai," Kira continued and there was a hand on his shoulder again but Shuuhei didn't take his eyes off the blond's face. "But we mustn't let it consume us. Don't blame yourself... Your friends wouldn't want that." The younger student squeezed his shoulder tenderly and before he knew it Shuuhei had his hand over Kira's, gripping it tightly in his. If it hurt Kira he didn't say, but Shuuhei held onto him with all his strength as his defences—the pain and anger he was trying to hide, the grief and the guilt that threatened to consume him, the numbness he was trying to force upon himself just to keep from screaming—shattered like glass.

"But it's my fault—" he choked out.

"It's not..."

"—it was my responsibility—"

"Senpai..."

Shuuhei stiffened when the blond suddenly put a comforting arm around him and had to restrain himself from shrugging it off because he didn't want this—not the pity of this Kira Izuru who lost parents Shuuhei never had and still had the friends Shuuhei would never see again.

"Let go," he said brusquely. He half-expected Kira to do the opposite and was relieved when the arm around him slowly slipped off his shoulders. Shuuhei immediately felt like a fool. He wanted to apologize but words utterly failed him. Kira was only trying to help—he had been through this after all—and Shuuhei appreciated that, but...he wasn't ready for this. Not now. Not yet. Looking up, he met Kira's gaze and willed the younger student to understand through his eyes and Kira nodded before slowly getting up.

"I should go," the blond said softly.

The hand in Shuuhei's flexed and it was only then that the sixth rounder realized he had been holding on to it the whole time. He let go and nodded at the freshman. "Thank you, Kira," he said. "For everything. And I...I'm sorry. It's just..." He stood up and pushed past the blond to look out the window, struggling to find the words to say. "I just..."

"I know." He heard Kira say behind him and Shuuhei nodded more to himself than to the freshman. Looking out the window, he saw that the snow had stopped falling. His and Kira's footprints were still clear and undisturbed on the snow-blanketed roof: one set going out, two coming back in. Shuuhei remembered leading the blond into his room but looking at their footsteps on the snow it seemed for all the world as if they had been walking side by side. It suddenly occurred to him that Kira didn't have to follow him here, didn't even have to _be_ here. And yet he had followed Shuuhei without a word. And he was _still_ here. Shuuhei wasn't alone.

"Senpai, if there's anything I can do—"

"Stay."

Kira faltered. "I beg your pardon?"

Shuuhei took a deep breath and turned to look at the blond. "Stay here," he implored, eyes darting momentarily to the bed Kira had occupied only minutes ago before he looked back and held the freshman's gaze "Please."

The blond looked at him uncertainly. Those wary blue eyes were instantly alert and Shuuhei watched with bated breath as Kira studied him, the light in his eyes changing as they flitted from one unidentifiable emotion to another. Finally Kira nodded. "All right," he said. "If you're sure..."

"I am." _I don't want to be alone._ He avoided looking into Kira's eyes as he pushed himself away from the window and went back to his bed, pausing only to give the blond's shoulder a tender squeeze of gratitude, before settling into the pillows and mattress with a heavy sigh. He suddenly felt very tired. He'd been exhausted when they got back from the transient world but this was different. He was bone-weary, as if all the strings holding him up had suddenly been cut. He wanted to sleep and never wake up.

From the other side of the room he heard light footsteps as Kira made his way to his own bed and he looked over and watched the blond climb into the mattress and pull the covers up to his chin.

One day, though neither of them knew it now, the two of them would find themselves in this very same position more times than either of them cared to count, under ever-changing circumstances. They would laugh about it, tell each other off for it, or lie in comfortable silence as they waited to get back on their feet again.

And one day, both their worlds would come crashing down on them, shattering their every hope, every dream—everything they had ever believed in—and in the midst of his own emotional turmoil, Kira's words would come back to Shuuhei from the farthest corner of his mind. On that day, he would be the strong one; he would tell his friend that "it's the hardest the day after", and leave it at that because by then Kira would not remember them, would not be able to place them as the words he had once said to placate a young man in grief.

But Shuuhei wouldn't forget and he'd hear it in his head, the young Kira Izuru's voice saying: "_When you wake up tomorrow you'll forget for a split second that they're gone. And when it comes back to you and you remember..."_

_I'll be there, _he would finish. _I'll be there._

For now the two of them lay in their beds in silence. Shuuhei stared at the ceiling, thinking of his friends—of Aoga and Kanisawa, Kaito and Nanami, all of them—calling forth to his mind images from happier times. He chuckled at a particularly fond memory, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, the same time the blond sighed softly in his sleep. He looked over to Kira's bed one last time, making sure the blond was still there, before wiping his eyes dry and finally drifting off to sleep.

**A Beginning.**


End file.
